


Cruel radio silence

by myoue



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Anxiety, Confessions, Drunkenness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 15:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12891282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myoue/pseuds/myoue
Summary: The truth is Victor thinks about confessing every day (his undying love, his well-kept secrets, his true feelings every time a stylist puts his bangs on the wrong side).





	Cruel radio silence

**Author's Note:**

> wow a successful nanowrimo at 4735/50,000 i think i've done pretty well for myself. sorry this is another disjointed thing going 88 miles per hour so just bear with me here.

He kisses Yuuri for the second time when they’re in bed together with their clothes on and the TV playing in the background. It’s light and chaste when their lips touch—like Yuuri himself is when he tiptoes around the _I love you, Victor_ said in non sequitur to an off-beat question that’s already long gone from Victor’s mind.

Yuuri can only stare at Victor after it slips off his tongue, searching for a reaction in Victor’s rock solid expression. But Victor holds him there, not breaking or showing smitten only because he’s shocked into a stupor more than anything, unsure, for a moment, if this is something he can take seriously.

“ _I’m panicking_ ,” Yuuri’s eyes say, despite being so confident earlier, and then promptly after, “ _You’re the worst_ ,” as his fingers grip into the skin of Victor’s arm, imploring him for an answer that isn’t cruel radio silence.

Victor’s not doing it on purpose, not really. His fingers reach around Yuuri’s waist to bring him in close enough, mostly because Yuuri’s already riding around the edges of the bed about to fall off or take the opportunity to run away to another part of their apartment. Victor won’t let him go that easy.

He laughs, smiling so wide his teeth hurt.

Yuuri remains sulky and puzzled when Victor rubs into the threads of his woollen sweater, securing his hold there, feeling soft and warm as he pulls Yuuri against him.

Victor’s eyes close, thinking this is both unreal and surreal at the same time. That it’s been _months_ —an amount of time that Victor doesn’t want to ascertain—since Yuuri’s kept this confession inside of him. Victor was so sure he could handle doing the same thing himself, but it’s proven to be difficult.

Yuuri closes his eyes too when shaky relieved breaths of air release from him. His lip curls, quivers. He sounds like he’s trying not to cry but Victor won’t blame him if he does. Skaters’ hearts are fragile, and Yuuri’s is the most fragile of them all. Sometimes, Victor just doesn’t know how to act in front of him.

“Why now, anyway?” Victor whispers, making Yuuri open his eyes again.

“Why…?” Yuuri says back in just as much of a whisper. He stares more at Victor, gazing, pupils darting back and forth, like the answer for why either of them do anything should be right there in front of them. Instead, he shakes his head minisculely against the pillow. “I don’t know why. I think about saying it so often that sometimes I worry it’ll slip out while…” He grows a familiar pink. “I’m not paying attention.”

“Like an accident?”

“Not this time.”

“Not tipsy, are you?” Victor smiles.

 _Not this time_.

Yuuri squeezes his eyes together again, skin getting hotter under the covers. His hands move to clutch against the front of Victor’s shirt like he wants to pull him closer, or maybe just to his senses. “No! Just…”

“Just?”

“It’s—It’s not that. I, um, wonder when the best time is... just, all the time. Which is silly. There’s never a best time for things like this—there’s only _a_ time. Does that make sense? Err, it’s not really important. Not really. Victor, please stop me.”

“I love you.”

He hears the softest intake of breath, chopping Yuuri’s thoughts in half, feeling Yuuri swell beneath his touch before he’s burying his face into Victor’s collar. It’s effective in stopping the emotional turmoil that Yuuri would have worked himself into otherwise. Though, Yuuri is emitting a noise that sounds oddly like the humming of a motorized machine wanting to go, go, go but still set on pause.

He’s embarrassed and such a darling and Victor can’t stand it.

Victor makes it worse by snaking his arms around Yuuri’s sides and hugging him closer. He says it again, “I love you so much, Yuuri.” Not that it’s really necessary because he hears it, knows it, feels the weight of Yuuri’s love every day of his life without him having to say it.

But Victor will say it anyway, again and again and again, until Yuuri’s desperation overrides the nerve wracked limbs of his body and he silences Victor with his lips once more, deeper this time, a lover’s kiss.

In the breaks between, Victor says, “And it _is_ important.”

And Yuuri agrees, though that’s something else he can’t bring himself to say just yet.

-

The first time it comes to Victor’s attention that he’s an all-star media personality, secondary but not altogether separate from his career as a competitive skater, the only thing he does is laugh it off.

That’s not me at all, he thinks. Though, what comes out of his mouth is: “Ah, I’m so embarrassed! Thank you so much, everyone.”

He shakes hands with everyone, remembering names and faces, including those of the production staff and catering. He can’t help it. It’s ingrained in him at this point—not of necessarily his personality, but of his persona.

He learns to set aside what he wants for what is expected of him. And not much later, he learns that what he wants and what’s expected of him may even be one in the same. Though, it hasn’t ever bothered him one bit.

“How can you expect others to believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself?” he tells Yuuri, sharper than he wants to be, considering Yuuri’s just stepped off the set of an interview that included him stating on live national television, “ _If I don’t have any standards for myself then I can’t be disappointed_.” He can’t just say stuff like that, like none of it even matters. Like it’s not important at all.

“It just slipped out, sorry.”

“It slipped out for _twenty_ minutes?”

“You don’t understand,” Yuuri says, sinking to the floor somewhere along the wall of the studio, knees drawn up, taking out his phone and earbuds to drown himself in Chopin before his brain can catch up with the combined sentiment for _others_ and _expectations_.

“I do,” Victor argues, kneeling beside him. He wants to run a hand through Yuuri’s hair or squeeze his shoulder or _something_ , but he’s not sure if Yuuri would let him right now. He doesn’t know if any of this is right to say. “I do. You think I don’t understand? Wanting it so badly that I can no longer even think straight…”

Yuuri shakes his head. “It’s like there are two parts of me,” he explains, finger hovering over the screen of his phone. “The logical side is— _of course_ I want to win. I wouldn’t be training this hard and doing this much if I didn’t. I wouldn’t be entering competitions and doing interviews and putting myself out there. Then there’s the other side, whatever the opposite of logical is—that it’s absolutely crushing to expect too much and have none of it pay off. It’s… utterly humiliating. I hate thinking about it, let alone having it actually happen. People might not believe in me, but to me these shows and all these things are just window dressing. I don’t care if people glance over me. And I know it doesn’t make any sense at all, but I’ve learned this is the only way I _can_ skate, if I can just shut them all out. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep doing that.”

He pauses, finger still hovering, lets Victor see the flaw in his argument. “But what if you expect too much and still get what you want? What if you could have it all?”

“Naïve,” Yuuri cuts Victor off right there, looking anywhere but at him. “Don’t mistake me for someone else.” He presses play, folding in on himself, and putting his head to his knees. “I’m sorry,” he mutters.

Victor lets out a breath.

He doesn’t take offence to any of that.

“It’s okay.”

He lifts the cuffs of his pants to sit down on the floor with Yuuri until whenever the next segment is supposed to end and it’s his turn to be interviewed.

Wardrobe will be annoyed with him for crinkling up his suit, but he knows they aren’t obliged to complain about it, at least not to his face. Because his salary is at least fifty times theirs. Because he controls @v-nikiforov as well as the top standing for Most Followers on three of the biggest social media websites. They’ll murmur something under their breath before dusting him off, or they’ll get him another pair of pants altogether. They’ll strip a pair off a lesser-known someone if they have to—that’s actually happened to Victor before.

Yuuri doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt. But he doesn’t ask for it, either.

Neither had Victor asked for any apologies even if Yuuri is willing to give them out far too liberally. He wasn’t directing that last _sorry_ at Victor, but rather towards himself for being like this, and having been like this his whole life, for having it now affect someone besides himself. That’s what Victor will tell himself is happening.

He wonders if this is what Yuuri means when he talks about feeling one way but deliberately telling yourself something else, two things he never thought could’ve been differentiated before. Up until now, at least. If he’s supposed to be happy then he’s happy, right?

At first, he simply wants to sit near Yuuri but then gets concerned that, with his head down, Yuuri might think he got up and left. Which he’ll have to eventually, but at least not for now.

So, Victor places his hand on Yuuri’s still clutched around his phone atop his knee.

He hopes it’s okay like this.

He wishes just doing something as simple as this was the solution to everything.

Victor’s never known how to deal with people who cry in front of him. When it’s Yuuri who cries, at first Victor thinks he’s the same way, he’ll freeze up. But then he turns numb, cold—he feels so painfully shattered on top of it, like he’s personally responsible for Yuuri getting to that point. Like if only he could’ve been a better support. If only he could’ve said the right things. If only he could say anything at all.

When Yuuri transfers his phone to his other hand, closing his fingers around Victor’s without looking up, Victor tells himself that means everything might just be okay. But what he feels is an inexplicable surge of relief, wondering, desperately, if he’s allowed to hold out as much hope as he does.

He can already hear it in his head.

Forgive him, Yakov. Even as he willingly continues to let it happen. Yuuri’s going to be the one comforting him. _Again_.

-

“So, when did you know,” Chris asks, elbows leaning back on the table, “that you were in love with him?”

The music is too loud, the strobe lights are blinding, and this isn’t the place to have this kind of conversation.

“August 14th, 2016,” Victor answers. His chair is turned outwards from the same table, facing the hardwood turned into a dancefloor.

“Jesus Christ, you know the fucking day?”

“Oh, yeah. The great Northeast Blackout of 2016. We were on set. I was sitting with Yuuri after his interview, I was supposed to go up after him. He was having sort of post-production anxiety, I don’t know what to call it, and I didn’t want to leave him alone. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, but for some reason right then I thought _I don’t want to go in front of those cameras in five or ten or fifteen minutes_ because it meant having to pretend like I wasn’t feeling like utter shit. I might’ve said something stupid to him during that time.”

“I believe that.”

“Anyway, he—he made me reevaluate my whole damn life right then and there. And I don’t think he meant to do that. He was just word vomiting at me to get his mind off things. Just things about, you know, how much he wants to win. But with everything he said, I started to wonder about… just how disconnected _I’d_ become. Like how much I cared about such stupid things, how power hungry I was, and I have this massive need to be liked.”

“Still do.”

“I’m trying to get better.”

“That’s what counts. Nothing wrong with wanting to be liked, though.”

Victor continues, “But Yuuri—he’s the kind of guy who does what he says and says what he wants and he can be a little closed within himself, but he also, yeah, he lives so honestly. And…”

“And…?”

The coloured strobe lights flicker into Victor’s eyes, to the point that he has to move his head out of the way. He blinks away the stars, flicking a finger to the collar of his shirt to unbutton the top two buttons of his shirt when it starts feeling warm. “And then the lights went out in the whole studio. Everything stopped working, including the cameras. No one knew what was going on. It was only later we found out it was a widespread power failure, affecting the whole northeastern part of the country at once. You know, it was the biggest in Europe at the time?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

Victor smiles. “In the end, I didn’t have to go on. I held Yuuri’s hand for hours on the floor until we were told to just go home. I dunno what it is, really, about this whole thing with him—that life feels better, like it’s richer and more interesting and… like I’m learning things about myself? Just by being near him. That’s a sign I shouldn’t let him go, right?”

Chris chuckles. “Oh, Victor.” He turns into laughter drowned into the glass of his champagne, eyeing Victor who can only caress the rim of his own glass against his lips. “So, moral of the story is he makes you feel like shit for the first time in your life and that’s when you fall in love with him?”

“That’s exactly right.”

“I’d say typical but…”

“But?” Victor’s offended. “When has this ever happened with me before to warrant being typical?”

“I just mean, if it had to happen, of course it would happen like this,” Chris says, always so sensible.

Victor leans back, bobbing his head ever so slightly to the music. “Oh. Yeah, you’re right.”

“I always am.”

And then of course, Victor takes his eyes off for one second and he nearly eats the ground.

“Victor!”

Yuuri crashes into him, causing his chair to scrape backwards until Yuuri is sitting settled on Victor’s legs, arms wrapped around his neck. Somehow, Glass of Champagne Number Eighty-Five that Yuuri had brought over with him remains three-quarters full and perfectly steady. “I missed you.”

“Woah! Hi Yuuri,” Victor soothes, stroking a hand to Yuuri’s back. He’s sweaty and radiating heat. Victor catches a glimpse of Chris over Yuuri’s shoulder and receives a knowing eyebrow raise. He turns his attention back to Yuuri, parting some of the sweat-slicked strands of hair from Yuuri’s forehead. “Oh, you missed me?”

“Yeeahh.”

“But I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“I know. I was really good out there, huh? You saw, right?”

“Yep. You were so good. You’re okay, though? Not ready to head back yet, are you?” He brushes the back of his hand against Yuuri’s cheek, delighting when Yuuri adores himself against it.

“Nooo. Not yet. Victor. You haven’t been drinking.”

“Yes, I have.”

“Not _enough_.”

“Well, someone’s gotta keep an eye on you. Make sure you don’t do anything you wouldn’t do while sober.”

Yuuri huffs. “Keep an eye on me while being drunk.”

“Oh, you two are just precious,” Chris gushes, leaning across the table, putting a hand in a whispering motion near his mouth. “Hey, Yuuri. Wanna know what Victor just told me about you? You’ll love it.”

“Wh—” He hiccups, laying his head against Victor’s shoulder. “What?”

And that’s enough of that. Victor doesn’t let him get comfortable, maneuvering his hands beneath Yuuri’s elbows so they can both stand up. “Okay, okay, let’s not continue giving Chris a free show. How about we get you cleaned up?”

He flattens a hand against Yuuri’s sticking-up hair, lets out another prompting _hm?_ , as Yuuri stares straight forward, eyes drooping, like there’s something on Victor’s chest. Yuuri hums, contemplating.

“Ehhhh? I was just teasing,” Chris whines, and then adds, “He’s been giving everyone a free show.”

“I should be charging money then,” Yuuri chirps.

“Have you tried the chocolate strawberries yet, Yuuri? They’re a wonderful aphrodisiac…”

“No! Oh my gosh, where is it—where are they?” He looks frantically around.

“Maybe not, Yuuri,” Victor says, smiling innocuously so only Chris can see it. “Okay, come now. Can you find your pants for me, please?”

They bid their good nights to Chris and everyone else. After they procure the pants, dropped on the floor in a corner somewhere, they hobble off in search of the bathrooms along a fancy but entirely empty corridor of the banquet hall. There’s supposed to be something like five sets of washrooms on this floor, and after however many unsuccessful attempts of Yuuri trying to pull them both back to the dancefloor every time the high point of a song in the distance makes its way into Yuuri’s ears, they manage to find the most deserted washroom.

“What did Chris want to tell me?” Yuuri slurs, slouching against the low-rise marble sink as Victor washes his hands. Yuuri’s pants are back securely on him, shirt tucked in, and suit jacket slung over the counter. “Something you said… about me,” he adds like he’s trying not to forget it.

“It’s nothing,” Victor says.

“Nnnn. No.” Yuuri shakes his head, but doing so might’ve only made him more dizzy because he stops immediately. “It was something. I could tell.”

What can you tell in this state? Victor thinks. He’s not particularly worried, but he also knows never to underestimate Yuuri. 

“It’s not important,” he says. “You won’t remember it if I tell you anyway.”

“Oh, yeah?” Yuuri sidles up next to him, sticking his chin to Victor’s shoulder. “Try me.”

He pouts, narrowing his eyes. Yuuri doesn’t have his glasses so his face feels extremely close, aggressive and unencumbered and unfairly potent. He has this way of seeming completely detached normally, of seeming like he couldn't give less of a damn about something that he really gives too many damns about. And it's all so he can drive Victor up the wall with worry and anxiety and concern like he wants to let Victor know first-hand what it feels like.

He knows. He knows what it feels like now.

The faucets are automatic so Victor simply lifts his hands up, shaking them gently back and forth. He doesn’t know if he can physically move himself to the hand dryer without having Yuuri fall face first on the floor. But even if he did, Victor would catch him, soaking his wet hands up in Yuuri's shirt just to do it.

Yuuri mumbles, “Y’know, I really love you, Victor. There, I said it. Aahh, I said it.”

He’s more comfortable laying his cheek against the hard jutting bone of Victor’s shoulder, closing his eyes.

Victor swallows the lump that forms at the back of his throat. The reflection of him and a just about knocked-out Yuuri standing side by side stares mockingly back at him from the bathroom mirror. Victor remains there, with his hands held out in front of him awkwardly, until they completely air-dry and Yuuri has passed out on his feet.

“You realize this is the fourth time you've done this now,” Victor murmurs, not bitter at all that every single time always ends up like this. Of course, Yuuri doesn’t hear. He doesn't fall on his face. He doesn't bother to remind Victor his jacket is still on the sink like it didn't cost Victor two hundred euros out of pocket, how it's way too expensive to buy for him let alone to leave on a sink.

He wraps a now-dry hand around Yuuri’s shoulder to drag them both outside and into a taxi back to their hotel. Yuuri falls against his shoulder once more in the car, remarks that he'll take Victor's current suit once he grows out of it. Not happening, Victor thinks. Though, his blazer is already around Yuuri's shoulders.

He’ll have Yuuri tucked into the cozy sheets of the second bed back at the hotel, where Yuuri flings an arm out to gather together a spool of blanket to hug like it should be Victor there. He's starting to torture himself at this point.

And then, not being able to help himself, Victor will watch, very literally, as the memories of the night disappear into a calming, mesmerizing, snoring that will last until five minutes before check out the next morning.

-

“I might confess something to you tomorrow,” Yuuri tells him at some point in the future but not so far forward that Victor is confident in what he just heard.

Victor has a finished beer on the coffee table, hasn’t drunk much at all. He’s just barely buzzed, can hardly taste the alcohol in his mouth, which makes him wonder now if his tolerance is starting to wane, if what he hears now is actually coming in through a filter and he’s been misinterpreting every strange thing that he’s ever heard while in this state.

“What?” Victor responds from the couch. “You might?”

Yuuri’s head is down—he’s chopping at something from the kitchen in preparation for a midnight meal. Victor had asked for a bite of it when he’s done. “If you’re okay with that,” Yuuri murmurs.

“Okay with what?”

If only to convince himself, Victor tries to stare at some fixed point in the distance, concentrating on it—the DVDs beside the TV—to judge how blurred his vision is. But it seems fine. His head isn’t wobbling back and forth.

So it’s not the alcohol conjuring up delusions. But then that means Yuuri’s just…

No, it’s the alcohol after all.

“I’ve been trying to deal with my problems,” Yuuri says, not sounding like he’s talking to Victor at all.

“Why tomorrow, though—why not right now?” Victor asks.

“I, uh—just need some time, that’s all.”

“Oh. That’s okay. Whatever it is, you don’t have to have anxiety solved in one night,” Victor says, listening to the sounds of Yuuri chopping against the cutting board. They’re very slow, methodical, like he’s careful about every movement.

“It's not... really that. Well, I guess it is, I suppose.”

“This or that, let me keep telling reporters to fuck off for you, please?” Victor puts his feet up on the table, grins into his hand. “If there’s one thing I love it’s seeing asterisk stars in the paper. Or bleeping me out on TV. But they can’t _not_ feature me. Oh, it’s hilarious.”

Yuuri laughs from the kitchen.

“Admit it, I look cool doing it. I’ve made the successful transition into diva territory.”

“Ah.” He sounds like he wants to dispute that charge but decides against it. “You’re pretty cool,” Yuuri agrees, sly. “But I've always found you cool.”

“ _Pretty_ cool, though,” Victor repeats, fond. “Ahhh.”

Eventually, Yuuri comes around the corner to sit next to Victor on the couch with a single bowl in his hand. Victor’s about to reach over and steal a bite of whatever it is, but then stops.

His hand remains midair. “You made…”

“Strawberries,” Yuuri finishes, one already going in his mouth. The green ends are cut off. He stares straight forward at the TV—the midnight rerun of a cooking show Victor had had it on. “Didn’t Chris say strawberries were an aphrodisiac?” Yuuri says absently.

Victor blinks. “Did he?” And then he rephrases, “You remember that?”

Yuuri nods slowly. “I don’t… remember exactly where or when he said that, though. Oddly enough.”

“Oh…”

“You want one?”

“An aphrodisiac? No thanks…”

“It's only one if you want them to be.”

“What does _that_ mean…?”

“It means I took them all because you said you would want some.”

“...Well, I’m okay.”

“You're going to make me eat all of them by myself.”

“Yes.”

He didn't even know they had strawberries in the fridge. Or maybe Victor had merely denied their existence until now.

Yuuri brings a knee up on the couch, turning his body towards Victor, the bowl in his lap, against his thigh. He does this because he knows it makes Victor nervous—to have all the attention on him. He’s used to attention, but not when it’s Yuuri’s. “You want one. I can tell,” Yuuri says. He's awful. This really isn't fair.

“Fine, I do.” He caves so easily, Victor's almost ashamed. Just because Yuuri is so inclined on it.

So, fine. Victor’ll stick his hand into a bowl that’s sitting on Yuuri’s lap, take one and just one, if that's what Yuuri wants. Originally, he’d wanted a bite of whatever Yuuri was making so he could share an indirect kiss with him, nothing special, nothing he would deny if asked. Once Victor gets something in his head, he can’t stop thinking about it. 

He won’t listen to Yuuri go on about how ripe and juicy these are, like he'd just picked them straight from the strawberry fields himself, nor how wet they sound in his mouth like he’s doing all this on purpose. He won’t think about what a dangerous mix strawberries and alcohol and midnight are, either.

Yuuri catches his hand. It’s so surprising that the strawberry in Victor’s fingers drops back into the bowl.

But, wordlessly, Yuuri picks up that very same one, moving the bowl and the rest of them to the table.

It goes in his mouth between his teeth. He’s still gripping Victor’s wrist.

Yuuri swings a leg over him, harkening back to that night when he’d taken refuge on Victor’s lap, sitting comfortably like it was something normal they do when it wasn’t at all. The others there probably thought it was. But it was only something Victor had allowed in the moment as a fleeting, indulgent thing for himself to enjoy. Maybe one day it _would_ be normal, is what he thought.

Yuuri can’t speak; he’s got a piece of heart-shaped fruit lodged between his lips, legs lodged into the side of Victor's hips, and even if Victor had wanted to say something himself he doesn’t how to formulate any of the words together to say it. Yuuri's expression is strange, dark, but unsatisfied, like he's the one who's drunk but also like he's entirely aware of it this time.

Stop watching everything else, he says. And start looking only at me.

When Yuuri leans forward, it’s almost like a command—Victor tilts his head up, he can't help it. His lips part automatically.

When Yuuri gets in close enough, Victor can feel his warm breath first. Then he feels the edges of the strawberry gleaning along his lips, rough to the touch but only slightly. Yuuri’s face is close, so _close_ —enough so that Victor has to squeeze his eyes shut, concentrate on his heartbeat racing, let Yuuri do whatever he wants to him.

And then the strawberry is fully in his mouth as Yuuri closes the distance to meet him, lips becoming soft on his.

Victor feels himself melt into the folds of the couch when Yuuri presses into him, harder, until Victor’s head is hitting the back rest of the couch. It feels good. Yuuri tastes good.

He kisses back as best he can, though it’s proving difficult with fruit in his mouth, becoming more of a distraction at this point. Yuuri moves, sucks against him, breathes so harshly that Victor feels it shiver down his core. He wants to only think of Yuuri.

He puts a hand to Yuuri’s waist, crushes the strawberry in his mouth so the sweet becomes messy between their lips, dribbling down his chin at some point, but he doesn’t care. He’s never wanted anything more than this right now. As his tongue flicks through the juice, trying to bring Yuuri in closer, he wants Yuuri to know he was right. Victor’s been wanting this so badly the whole time.

At some point, Victor stops breathing and starts coughing, having to tear his lips away when remnants of the strawberry go down his windpipe. It takes a little longer to recover with the sudden dizziness.

He’s halfway through an apology, but his skin is feeling too warm, his face is probably beat red, and Yuuri is still sitting heavy on him.

“You’re drunk,” Yuuri tells him, as if just realizing this.

He is but he isn’t. That’s the only conclusion Victor could come to. He shrugs because it's almost too confusing it doesn’t matter.

Yuuri gets off him, wiping away the strawberry from his mouth in the process, though he’s not nearly as messy as Victor is. He stands there, glancing around like he’s not quite sure what to do now, and then leaves Victor on the couch to walk off somewhere else. If Victor hadn't had this happen to him as often as it does, it might've been harder to take.

His hand falls against his head. His lip curls. Of course, it hits him all at once. The same feeling every time Yuuri has his jacket around his shoulders, every time Yuuri kisses the palm of his hand and insists there's nothing else to it.

Victor finds him later curled up in bed, only noticeable as a giant lump because the blankets are up and over his head.

He lifts the covers, inserting himself beside Yuuri. Victor can still taste him, so sweet, on his lips. But he’s calmed down now. Maybe he’s even sobered up a little.

“Are… Are you going to finish the strawberries?” Victor asks, unsure if Yuuri’s even awake. He’s left them on the table, and Victor hadn’t known what to do with them except put plastic wrap over the bowl and stick them back into the fridge.

Yuuri turns to face him. Victor knows what he’s going to say. Sorry. He’ll be better. He’s trying to be better. He doesn’t want to make excuses. He doesn’t want to ignore things. He doesn’t want to leave things behind when he’s supposed to be responsible for them. Why does he have to keep second-guessing? Why does he have to think one way and feel another? Victor, he implores, how do you do it?

It's okay, Victor wants to whisper. He probably does whisper it at some point, no matter how many times he has to do it. Just live honestly, it's your specialty. You're an inspiration to at least one person, Yuuri. Please don't forget it this time.

Yuuri reaches a hand out, puts it soft against Victor’s neck, and then his cheek, and then caresses Victor’s lip with his thumb like he wants to continue where they left off.

“I love you, Victor.”

And Yuuri will mention sometime later that technically it’s tomorrow now, so he hadn’t lied about that.

-

“I want his problems to be my problems, and for mine to be his,” Victor concludes, watching Yuuri perform a backflip over a scared-to-death Yurio.

“So you don’t have to take care of yourself by yourself anymore,” Chris says, nodding in understanding, clinking his glass one sidedly to Victor’s. “And till death do you two part.”

**Author's Note:**

> there is absolutely no relevance for any obscure references that i made in this lol


End file.
